Questar Assessment, Inc. (www.QuestarAI.com), a leading educational assessment provider for states, schools, school districts and third parties, today released a new series of test forms for its widely successful Degrees of Reading Power® (DRP®) literacy assessment for students in grades K-12. DRP assessments were the first criterion-referenced assessments to utilize the concept of readability.
“The Degrees of Reading Power has been Questar’s flagship catalog assessment tool since our inception over 30 years ago, and it continues to be one of the truest measures of students’ reading comprehension available today,” said Roy Lipner, Questar President and Chief Executive Officer. “Our customers can now begin using these enhanced forms at the start of this school year.”
While the latest forms have an updated look and new passages, they are fully compatible with Questar’s previous forms and provide teachers with more options for fall, mid-year and spring testing.
The new “A & B” series of forms, which will be offered at the same price as the older ones, are slightly shorter in length than previous DRP forms, and are given grade-level designations in contrast to previous forms.
“We listened to our customers,” explained Lipner. “We heard that administrators prefer shorter tests, provided it wouldn’t affect test validity. We could do that. We heard they prefer that tests be named according to grade level, rather than arbitrary form designations. Our new tests do that. I think you’ll find we’ve taken our best product and made it even better.”
DRP assessments, originally developed through collaboration with the New York Board of Regents, the Carnegie Corporation and the College Board, were the first criterion-referenced assessments to utilize the concept of readability. Students’ reading performance on DRP tests is directly linked to the difficulty, or readability, of the text they can read. As such, DRP tests are used to set literacy goals, identify student reading ability, monitor progress, link students to appropriate reading material, evaluate instructional effectiveness, and predict high-stakes state test results. Millions of tests are administered each year, and customized versions of the assessment are used as the Regents Competency Test (RCT) in English in New York State and as part of the Connecticut Mastery Test in English.
To complement their DRP assessments, Questar provides objective, consistent computations of the text difficulty, or readability, of printed materials, including textbooks, works of literature, popular titles, and non-curricular materials such as newspapers, periodicals, and manuals. Readability results are published in proprietary software, DRPBookLink®, and on Questar’s Web site. Together, DRP Tests and DRP Readability analyses form the basis of the Degrees of Reading Power Program.
ABOUT QUESTAR ASSESSMENT, INC.
Questar Assessment, Inc. is a leading educational assessment provider for states, schools, school districts and other educational publishers. Headquartered in Brewster, N.Y. Questar provides test design, development, calibration and psychometric services through print production, distribution, scanning, scoring, reporting and data analysis, as well as readability analysis of written materials. To meet the requirements in electronic assessment, Questar offers on-line testing services to schools and educational entities in the K-12 market as well as customized assessment engines for curriculum providers. For further information, visit the company’s Web site at www.QuestarAI.com or contact Robin Newhook, Director of Marketing at 845-277-1519.